Chapter 39
I’m sure the last thing Piper expected when she got back from her lecture was to find Colt in the middle of putting a shirt on. “What are you doing?” she shrieks. “Get out of here! Oh my god!”
Colt and I look up in unison. I lost track of time, and we scrambled out of bed to try and get him out of here before Piper returned from class. We didn’t make it.
And now she’s standing in the doorway to our room, looking horrified. “I’m getting security.”
“No, wait. It’s not like that.”
“What, did he tell you to say that?” I don’t think she could give him a filthier look than she is right now. “I ought to cut your balls off for what you’ve done. How could you? What was it this time? How did you convince her?”
Colt doesn’t say a word. I don’t know if he’s shocked or amused by her reaction.
I reach her, take her by the arm, and pull her into the room, then close the door so we have at least a modicum of privacy.
“It isn’t like that this time. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s complicated.
I promise, though. He didn’t force me into it. ”
Then I shoot him a look over my shoulder. “This time.”
Understanding dawns in his eyes, and he waves a hand between us. “You told her?”
“I told her everything, yeah. I had to talk to somebody. I was going crazy.”
“Don’t even pretend it’s not true.” The look Piper’s giving him could melt steel. If I didn’t truly believe she meant it when she said she wanted us to be friends again, I would believe it now. She’s ready to kill for me.
He lets out a long breath before finally shrugging. “I’m not going to pretend. It’s all true—I’m sure she didn’t exaggerate anything. I’m not proud of it, believe me.”
“That doesn’t make me feel any better.” Piper turns to me, her eyes going wide. “I don’t get it. Why would you?”
Even if Colt wasn’t here, I wouldn’t know what to say. “It’s complicated. I don’t understand it myself.”
“It is complicated,” Colt adds.
“I don’t even want to look at you.” She throws her backpack on her bed and plops down, arms folded. “Even if your dad made you do it, you could have told Leni why.”
When I turn to Colt, lifting an eyebrow, I find him staring at the floor with his thumbs hooked through the belt loops on his jeans.
“She does have a point,” I tell him. Amazing how her being here makes it easier for me to say all the things that have been on my mind. He has a way of mixing me up, but Piper’s presence gives me back a little bit of myself.
“It’s not that easy, and it wasn’t like I knew everything ahead of time. We knew my dad was obsessed with you and that he wanted us to befriend you. We figured if we did the opposite, you wouldn’t want to be around us… including my dad.”
“Oh…” That does make sense, but it doesn’t explain many other things. “That was before. What about the past few weeks?”
“Again, we didn’t think he would ever take it this far.
He did this whole thing in stages, always telling us to do one more thing and then he would be done.
Well, that one more thing always turned into more, and by that time, we were already so entangled he would have blamed all of it on us anyway. ”
“I know he’s your dad, and I know you feel like you have to be loyal to your father or whatever, but I can’t let him get away with what he did. And if you care about me the way you say you do, you’ll have to prove it by helping me make him pay for what he did.”
He’s slow to sit on my bed, and suddenly, he looks drained. “I can’t do that.”
“Why the hell not?” I blurt out. All the pain, frustration, loneliness, and confusion are in that question, ringing out in the room.
“Because I just can’t.” His voice is so small, almost reminding me of a little boy’s. “And I can’t tell you more than that. I wish I could. I wish I could help you. I want him to pay, too. For all of it, for everything. But it’s just not possible. You aren’t the only person involved here.”
I’m not the only person involved.
I don’t know why it took me so long to figure it out.
The way they reacted when I mentioned her. The torn-up picture and the way they stared at it. All the secrecy.
“Is this about your mother?” I whisper, knowing it’s true but also sort of hoping it isn’t. “She’s supposed to be dead, but you told me she’s not. Is he… using her against you somehow?”
He lifts his head slightly, his eyes barely meeting mine before darting away. But he nods, and Piper gasps softly.
“We can’t go into this. I don’t even know… just forget we ever talked about it.” He practically jumps up from the bed and crosses the room in three long strides. “I’m gonna go. Please, whatever you do, don’t tell anybody we had this conversation.”
“Wait a minute.” I’m cut off by my phone buzzing away on my desk. I wish I wouldn’t have turned it back on. I’m tempted to ignore it since it can’t be anybody important, anyway—I almost never get calls.
But I glance over anyway because isn’t that what you do when your phone rings? Even if you have no intention of answering, curiosity makes you look. And that’s what I do.
I only programmed her number into my phone just in case I had an emergency and thought she might give a damn for once. “It’s my mom.” Nobody could be more surprised than I am as I answer the call, holding up a finger in a silent plea for Colt to stick around.
“Mom?” At first, I can’t figure out what I’m hearing. “Mom?” I call out over the sound coming through the phone. “Are you okay? What’s wrong?”
“Oh, Leni!” It finally hits me that she’s sobbing.
Loud, gusty sobs. “Sweetie. I didn’t know. I swear I didn’t know! I’m so sorry!” Whatever she says after that is lost to another burst of sobs, louder than before.
By now, Colt is standing beside me, and I can tell from the look on Piper’s face that she can hear everything, too. It would be impossible not to, the way Mom is screaming.
“Mom, slow down. Please, I don’t understand what’s happening. Are you okay? Did he hurt you?” I mean, I have to ask that question. It’s what I’ve secretly been dreading all along. As much as she’s hurt me, I don’t want him hurting her.
“Am I okay? No, I’m not okay! Oh, Leni, this is all my fault! How did I not see it? And all the things I said to you, oh, my god! I could die! Can you ever forgive me?”
Now I’m crying because, for the first time in as long as I can remember, there is true, genuine regret in her voice. I believe every word of it, even if I don’t understand. “What happened? Please, slow down so I can understand. Did he say something?”
“I found what you wrote! I was going through your room, and your old laptop was sitting there, and I opened it up because… I don’t know why I did it,” she confesses.
“But it was right there, all of it. Everything you wrote down. How did I not know? I will never forgive myself, I swear. My poor girl. My poor baby.”
“You didn’t know,” I whisper through my tears, sinking onto the bed. It’s all too much. I can’t cope.
“But there’s more than that,” she continues, the words pouring out. “I went to his computer. I don’t know what made me do it, but I told myself I had to find some kind of proof so we could nail the bastard. So I looked through his computer and, oh my god, you would not believe what I found.”
Fear freezes me stiff. He never took video, did he? What if he had cameras hidden somewhere in the house? “What did you find?”
“So many files. He didn’t hide them very well.
Right there on his computer, saved to their own network like he was looking at them while he was at the office.
I can’t even begin to imagine. Oh, Leni, can you ever forgive me?
We’ve got to find out what to do about this.
I swear, whatever you need, you’ve got it. Please, forgive me.”
“One thing at a time.” I can barely think. I’m so overwhelmed. She believes me. Maybe we can finally be a team the way we’re supposed to. All this time, I figured she wouldn’t care even if she knew the truth, but now I know. And so does she.
“Okay, here’s what I need you to do. Come here. Come to my dorm, and we’ll talk about it. But I think it would be smart for you to get out of the house.” Colt’s head bobs up and down, his eyes as hard as his expression. “Can you do that? Can you come here?”
“Yes, I will. Oh, honey, I’m so—”
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I reach out and grab Colt’s arm, my nails digging in at the sound of his father’s voice. That voice. I still hear it in my nightmares, but that’s nothing compared to hearing it for real.
And he is very, very angry.
“Mom, get out of there!” I don’t even know if she hears me because James is shouting, the voice getting louder like he’s coming closer.
“Put that fucking phone down!” That’s the last thing I hear before the line goes dead.
“Mom? Mom!” But she—or most likely, he—already ended the call.
“Come on. We have to go.” Colt practically has to pull me off the bed, but once I get moving, the shock wears off, and he’s the one who ends up having to follow me outside when I run past him, flying down the stairs and dashing through the lobby. Mom. What is he doing to her?
The tires squeal as we peel out of the parking lot and almost fishtail onto the road. Horns blare, and people shout at us, but none of it matters. Mom. What is he doing to her?
“She said she found files on his computer?” Colt asks as he tears down the road. I have no idea how he can focus on driving so fast while speaking.
“Yeah. I guess he saved them to their own network so he could access them from wherever he was. She didn’t say exactly what she found,” I whisper, and just the thought of it makes my insides freeze up.
I don’t know what I’ll do if I find out he took video of everything.
What if it got out somehow? What if he posted it online and shared it with his friends?
What if, what if? The questions will never stop. Will I ever know for sure?
There I was, thinking I would never step foot in that house again. Just turning into the neighborhood is enough to make me tremble in fear and dread. “Should we maybe call the police?”
“You know it wouldn’t matter,” Colt grunts. “He’ll find a way to pretend nothing was happening and it was all a big misunderstanding.”
“But it might stop him from whatever he’s doing now.”
We’re already turning into the driveway. “You should wait out here, just in case.”
The words are barely out of Colt’s mouth when it happens.
When the windows of the house blow out.
When a fireball shoots into the air.
At first, I don’t know what is happening. It looks like a scene from a movie, so unreal, so intangible.
Then the truck shakes. The aftershock from the explosion rocks the vehicle. My heart clenches in my chest.
My ears are ringing, and everything’s blurry. I try to speak, try to scream, but I can’t hear myself. Colt grabs my arms, and I can’t figure out why at first. Why can’t I hear? His lips are moving, but I can’t hear anything he’s saying.
The ringing subsides after a few moments and so does the strange, foggy feeling in my head. Once it’s gone, there’s only one thing on my mind. “Mom!” I’m already unbuckling my belt with one hand while throwing the door open with the other.
“Leni, wait!” But I can’t wait. How am I supposed to wait? The fucking house exploded and is now on fire, and my mother is in there. She’s in there somewhere.
“Mom! Mom!” I scream as I run across the lawn to where the house is in flames. Glass and wood and siding and shingles are everywhere, and I run through them with Colt behind me, shouting my name. “Mom!”
“Leni, wait!” Colt grabs me around the waist and pulls me back before I can reach the front door. “You can’t go in there!”
“But Mom!” I strain and stretch, trying to fight my way out of his arms. She was trying. She knew she was wrong. Why didn’t I tell her I forgave her? I ignored what she needed, my forgiveness. I could’ve given it to her. I have to tell her.
Colt pulls me backward and away from the house. My lungs burn, my throat is raw from screaming, and my muscles ache from fighting Colt.
A moment later, the left side of the house collapses in on itself. The deafening sound of glass breaking and wood splintering fills the area. The smell of burning rubble invades my senses, and all I can do is collapse just as the house did.
“No!” I croak, dropping to the ground. Colt’s arms are still around me, and I think that’s the only reason I’m not falling apart. Because of him, my heart is still in my chest instead of spreading out on the driveway in a thousand little pieces.
He holds me for a long time, well past the point when flashing lights dance over the ruins as fire trucks come speeding our way.